Category Archives: Non-Fiction

Going to the Movies: A Personal Journey Through Four Decades of Modern Film—Syd Field

19 Friday Apr 2019

Posted by in Autobiography / Biography / Memoir, Media / Film / Music, Non-Fiction

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What makes a movie great? Why are some movies memorable while others disappear into obscurity? The foundation underlying the performances and the directing is the screenplay. A screenplay can make or break a film. Going to the Movies is a combination of memoirs and a lesson on the art of screenwriting by a man who is known to have written some of the definitive books on the subject, Syd Field.

Field studied film at the University of California, Berkeley, in the 1960s when it was buzzing with talent. One of Field’s early mentors was Jean Renoir, one of the great French film directors, whom he met when he was studying film at the University of California, Berkeley. Renoir believed that film was a “new form of printing” and Lumière, the inventor of the motion picture camera, was the new Gutenberg (who invented printing in the 1400s).

Other students who went on to become famous were a young graduate student called Francis Ford Coppola and Ray Manzarek, who was part of a then little-known band called The Doors. It was the time of the New Wave, a revolt in cinema against the “puff films” (such as wholesome Doris Day fare). The New Wave produced films like François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, Alain Resnais’s Hiroshima Mon Amour[1] and Jean-Luc Goddard’s Breathless, all films that Field admired.

Field also met some of the greats of cinema during the course of his career: Renoir, Michelangelo Antonioni (whom he saw sitting on a bench as an old man and plucked up the courage to talk to) and Sam Peckinpah, with whom Field spent a summer when Peckinpah was writing The Wild Bunch.  

The book follows Field’s career and provides a glimpse into the film business, particularly the Hollywood film industry. He worked at Cinemobile, which started out as a “studio on wheels”, providing the technical and physical aspects of a film’s production. It was the brainchild of Fouad Said, who now wanted to produce his own films and had created Cine Artists. Field’s job was “find material”. For two and a half years, he read through piles of screenplays, looking for the one that would be good enough to go into production. But producers did not read scripts and had a minimal attention span: the script needed to be summarized in a couple of sentences. Among the scripts he pitched successfully were American Graffiti and Rocky, unlike Taxi Driver by Paul Schrader, for which there was no interest.   

Trawling through never-ending piles of scripts allowed Field to understand the elements that make them work—or not. Based on his close reading, Field devised a three-act paradigm that could be applied to most scripts. Briefly, this is how it works: Act 1, the first 20-30 minutes, sets the scene. This is followed by a plot point that pushes the protagonist into Act 2, which Field calls the Confrontation (and which also gives the protagonist his/her goal). Act 3 is the struggle to reach the goal and the resolution.

Field’s analyses films such as Sunset Boulevard, Chinatown, Citizen Kane, Pulp Fiction, Matrix and Casablanca to understand how they function. I enjoyed these analyses, and they made me want to go back to the films, so I could watch them with a different perspective, this time with an awareness of the nuts and bolts of the script.

This is an interesting book, even if you are not planning to write for films. Many cinema-goers do not always pay attention to the scriptwriter, although she/he is fundamental to the film (I do only when the writing stands out). Syd Field shines a light on this essential part of cinema: the writing on which the entire production rests.

[1] I saw Hiroshima Mon Amour when I was studying film, and I can still remember how it moved me, well over 30 years later. A powerful script.

The Owl Who Liked Sitting on Caesar: Life with an Enchanting Tawny Owl—Martin Windrow

17 Sunday Mar 2019

Posted by in Autobiography / Biography / Memoir, Nature, Non-Fiction

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“Shaving is tricky with an owl on your right shoulder.”

Especially when the owl sees it as a game, pecking at the razor at the end of each stroke and trying to eat the shaving cream. Meet Mumble, the Tawny Owl with whom Martin Windrow shared 15 years of his life.

Introduced to birds of prey through his older brother Dick, Windrow decides to get one of his own. Enter Wellington, a Little Owl (a species, not a description). It is a disaster from the start. The appropriately named owl (with the Duke’s iron will) had not been hand-reared by a human, and all of Windrow’s attempts to win his trust are met with deep suspicion. Eventually, Wellington escapes.

The second time around is completely different. Windrow’s owl is one of a batch of eggs that are hatched under Dick’s care. When Dick’s son is given the privilege of naming the owl, he calls her Marmite Sandwich, after his favourite thing. Windrow finds Marmite Sandwich in the kitchen, a little ball of feathers with large, shiny eyes.

“‘Kweep’, it said quietly. Enchanted, I leaned closer. It blinked its furry grey eyelids, then jumped very deliberately up on to my right shoulder. It felt like a big, warm dandelion head against my cheek, and it smelt like a milky new kitten. ‘Kweep’, it repeated, very softly.”

On the drive home, the owl escapes from her box and perches on his shoulder throughout the drive, taking a “delicate beak-grip” on his ear to steady herself. Windrow rechristens her Mumble for her way of holding a “quiet conversation with herself, me and the world at large”. And that is the start of a beautiful relationship.

Back in his apartment, Mumble settles into Wellington’s old cage, a large aviary on his balcony (which he has to keep secret from his landlord). Living with what is essentially a wild bird is fascinating, and Windrow is a keen observer. Mumble has a definite personality. She is eternally curious, loves drinking from a dripping tap, riding on the carriage of a typewriter as he types and exploring the back of shelves. Her curiosity can sometimes get her into trouble, like the time she leans over a little too far over the dishwashing water and falls in (and mutters irritably to herself as she slowly dries off). She also tries to feed Windrow bits of raw chicken, and when he avoids the morsels, she tries to stuff them into his ear instead.

As an owlet she is fine with visitors, but as an adult bird she is possessive and attacks anyone else who comes into the apartment. Windrow and Mumble eventually move to the country where she has a larger aviary outdoors.

Windrow’s observations of Mumble are interspersed with a lot of information about owls in general: the different species, how they are coping with the way humans are changing the landscape and their place in folklore. He is obviously passionate about owls and at the end of this book, I felt I had learned a lot about these wonderful birds.

Three Ways to Capsize a Boat: An Optimist Afloat—Chris Stewart

10 Sunday Feb 2019

Posted by in Non-Fiction, Travel

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It all began when Chris Stewart, 29 and out of work, bumps into a friend. “My great-aunt Jane has been on at me for weeks to find her a skipper [for her yacht], and I thought of you straightaway.” Which was a little odd because Stewart had never been on a boat before, never mind knowing how to sail. But he needed the job so he decided to keep minor details like that to himself.

A book, Teach Yourself Sailing, teaches him the jargon and how to tell one boat from another. He hopes this would be enough to impress grand-aunt Jane at their first meeting. (It is.) He is to pick up the boat, a Cornish Crabber, from a marina near Athens where it was being fixed by a Captain Bob Weare. He is to sail it to the island of Spetses, where Jane and her husband Bob would spend the summer. A dream job—provided Stewart could actually sail a boat.

He enlists the help of Keith, a “rather malodorous person with a black beard [and] a chubby boyish face” who has a crush on Stewart’s girlfriend, Ana, and who owns a boat, a “twenty-one-foot craft banged together out of plywood and tin”. All does not go well. There is thick fog and the boat capsizes, pitching them into the freezing sea. Fortunately, Keith knows how to right the boat by standing on it, and they survive.

Classes with a professional sailor, Tom Cunliffe, give Stewart enough knowledge to go to Athens with some confidence. He finds the Crabber in a terrible state—mouldy and without an engine. Stewart rescues it from Captain Bob and hands it over to two Greeks, both called Nikos. When Stewart worries that the keys are still with Captain Bob, one of the Nikos points out: “Keys are for engine. You got no engine.” Problem solved. New engine, new keys.

By the time Stewart has finished his stint with Jane, he is hooked on sailing. When Cunliffe asks if he would join his crew to sail to Newfoundland, Stewart jumps at it. They set out from Brighton on a rainy day in April, via Norway and Greenland. It is the first time that Stewart was going to be on a boat for weeks on end. He describes living on a boat: sharing a small space with other people (including Cunliffe’s wife and four-year-old daughter) in a small space, keeping watches at night while trying not to fall asleep, the cold, and the comforting tones of the shipping forecast. (And a very funny bit about trying to pee from the side of the ship in the freezing cold.)

They stop in a little town called Norheimsund, in Norway. The already stunning landscape of the fjords is heightened with white apple blossoms “as if bright patches of snow had lingered in the warm green valleys”. Norway is expensive so they live on fish they catch. A group of Norwegian men who come over for a night of drinking are horrified by this, and bring them enough smoked leg of lamb to last for the rest of the journey (which Stewart suspects wasn’t obtained entirely legally).

I love Stewart’s writing: he’s funny and lyrical and his vivid descriptions makes you feel you are there. And you can tell why people do get hooked on sailing: “as the land drops away astern, all the woes and worries that afflicted you on dry land—all the things you ought to have done but have left undone, all the drab detritus and clutter of your daily existence—slough away like the old dry skin of a snake”.

Chris Stewart is best known for the books he has written about living in Alpujarras in Andalucia, Spain,[1] and for briefly being a drummer in Genesis. I am so glad they kicked him out—it would have been a real loss to the book world if he was still drumming!

[1] See my reviews of his books: A Parrot in the Pepper Tree on this blog and Driving Over Lemons for Women on the Road (scroll down to the bottom of the page: it was the first one I wrote for the website!).

Daemon Voices: Essays on Storytelling—Philip Pullman

03 Sunday Feb 2019

Posted by in About reading, writing and books, Non-Fiction

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“[T]he image of the reader is solitary. We are each alone when we enter the borderland and go on to explore what lies in it and beyond it, in the book we’re engaged with. True, we can come back and and talk about it, and if we talk well and truthfully and interestingly enough we might entice other readers into it, and they too will explore it—but they too will be alone there until they in turn come back and tell us what they found there.”

Daemon Voices is a collection of Philip Pullman’s essays, articles and talks, mostly on storytelling, reading and the craft of writing, but also on politics, art and religion.

Pullman is best known for his fantasy trilogy, His Dark Materials. Ostensibly for young adults, these books—like all good writing—crosses age boundaries (and it is worth noting that Pullman didn’t intend the trilogy for a particular audience). I find this happening less now, but writing for children or young adults has often been scoffed at as not being as “serious” or “important” as writing for adults. Pullman dismisses this and is passionate about the importance of children’s literature. Good writing for children or young adults, as he points out, is every bit as important as that for adults. And as for adults reading children’s books, he quotes CS Lewis: “I now like hock, which I am sure I did not like as a child. But I still like lemon-squash. I call this growth or development because I have been enriched: where I formerly had one pleasure, I now have two.”

Writers have responsibilities, says Pullman. They have a duty to their readers to use language well (something that as an editor, I can’t agree with more): be clear and aware of what you are saying. But there is also their responsibility to their families: after all, to be a writer is a job, and they have to make sure they earn enough to provide for their loved ones. I have read a lot on writing and writers but very few say anything about the money-making side of it.  

There is so much here that I am only going to pick out a few things. We get a lot of insight on how Pullman wrote his books, especially His Dark Materials. It takes a single element to give an idea that spark that brings it to life. The first book fell into place when he came up with the idea (or the idea came to him, as he puts it) of daemons. A daemon is an animal version of a person that is constantly with them—the soul, in a way, that is external but part of them. It changes shapes in children and settles into a particular animal when they reach puberty. So when Lyra, the heroine of the trilogy, hears of children who daemons are being cut away from them, it is shocking not just to her but to the reader, and sets the trilogy in motion.

In His Dark Materials, the forces of good fight the Church to stop it taking control of Dust, the essence of consciousness. This reflects Pullman’s view of organized religion. He is not an atheist, because he finds that atheism can be equally totalitarian (something I had noticed too and was glad to find someone else agreeing with me).  

I loved Pullman’s perspective on the story of Adam and Eve, which makes sense. He sees the apple as the fruit of knowledge, which humans had to eat so they could be aware of the world around them. Hence the self-awareness that results when Adam and Eve bite into it, much as we become aware of ourselves when we cross the threshold into adulthood. Once you reach that threshold, there is no way back to innocence. But that does not mean that the Garden of Eden is closed to us forever—the way back is through what Pullman calls “the back door”, through wisdom and understanding.

The reader as explorer: The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich

There are also essays on narratives in art, where he examines well-known paintings (there are illustrations, both in colour and black and white). His dissection of Edouard Manet’s “A Bar at the Folies-Bergère”, which I’ve known for a long time (my interest in art was sparked by the Impressionists), made me see it in a completely different light. And the quote that I begin this review with is illustrated with “The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog” by Caspar David Friederich: again, a different take on a familiar painting, where the explorer is the reader.

There is some repetition, but that’s hard to avoid in a collection like this. There are things that I disagree with (his dislike of fantasy fiction like Lord of the Rings, for one), but this book wouldn’t be worth its salt if I agreed with everything. If you are a budding (or already established) writer, if you’re passionate about words and stories, then get this book. You don’t need to read it cover to cover—as I did—but can dip into it. There are essays here that I know I will be going back to. His writing makes me want to sit down with him over a meal and have a long discussion about books, writing and everything else.

Frida Folk: Gaby Franger

05 Saturday Jan 2019

Posted by in Art, Books in translation

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Review by Sadhana Ramchander

Book translated from German by Gita Wolf

Frida Folk celebrates, in an unusual manner, the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, and her many ‘avatars’.

This is indeed a fascinating book! It documents an unbelievable variety of interpretations of Frida­—the woman and the artist—by crafts-people and artists from all over the world. From murals to traditional tin shrines to hand bags and cushion covers to T-shirts and clay figurines, this book features them all. In the process, it entices you to read more about Frida, and also to see and understand her own paintings, which by the way, are NOT featured in this book.

I found the chapter on the art of the Aguilar Sisters very interesting. Their folk figures are original and unique. One of the sisters makes a Frida figurine with a child, even though Frida never had a child. This artist says, “maybe she didn’t have one when she was alive, but now that she’s dead, she gets one in my work.” It takes courage to say this, and only another artist can muster this courage!

The chapters are short, the writing lucid, and the book well laid out, bright and cheerful. The last part of the book titled, “Frida waits at every corner” is a collection of Fridamania photographs by Rafael Doniz.

Frida Folk is not a book you read and put away. It is a book you want to keep re-reading and looking at. And at the end of it, it makes you want to start your own collection of Frida memorabilia. The book reiterates Frida’s cult status and the fact that it is indeed very rare for an artist to be as popular as her, anywhere in the world.

Frida’s sister, Christina Kahlo, is a guest author. The chief photographer is Rafael Doniz. Published by Tara Books, Chennai, India, the book has been designed by Ragini Siruguri and production supervised by C. Arumugam. The German version is titled Frida Pop.

Best books of 2018

22 Saturday Dec 2018

Posted by in About reading, writing and books, Autobiography / Biography / Memoir, Books in translation, Crime / Thriller, Current Affairs / Politics / Society, Fantasy / Sci-Fi / Ghosts, Fiction, Historical fiction, Non-Fiction, Philosophy, Poetry, Travel

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My request for the best books you read this year had an overwhelming response! Thank you to those of you who sent in their lists.  

The lists below not only cover  a wide range of subjects, but also span centuries, from 2018 to those published hundreds of years ago. Fiction includes fantasy, crime and family sagas. The non-fiction books range from an account of the attack on Charlie Hebdo, problems with the Indian judicial system, to history, autobiography, politics, science and travel. We also have poetry, so there is something for everyone. I was delighted to find so many books in translation. Some are in French or Spanish and have not been translated (yet).

And I am proud to say that Achala Upendran’s first book made the cut—it’s incredible to see someone I have known since she was a child mature into a talented and successful writer.  

There is plenty for you to explore. Links are to reviews on this site (or to reviews on Women on the Road). Blurbs in quotes are from contributors.

Contributors: Caroline Dommen, Dalip Mehta, David Dunkley, Deborah Eade, Jenifer Freedman, Jo Grin-Yates, Kamakshi Balasubramanian, Kristine Goulding, Leslie Jones, Leyla Alyanak, Mariana Duarte Mutzenberg, Marie-Graziella Nguini, Sajid Mahmood, Sally-Anne Sader, Sergio Sandoval, Sophia Murphy, Stara Amidouch, Suroor Alikhan, Susie Partridge, Thomas Fitzsimons, Tom Peak, Usha Raman and Will Ramsay.

If you are not among the contributors, do share your list with us. We would love to hear from you. And here’s to another year of fantastic books!

Photo: Hackley Public Library (CC BY 2.0)

FICTION

General fiction

  • Ocean-Rimmed World: Joe D’Cruz (2005, translated from Tamil into English in 2018)
    The struggles and changing fortunes of the Parathavars of the Tuticorin coast—a community of seafarers and fisherfolk.
  • Go, Went, Gone: Jenny Erpenbeck (2015, translated from German into English in 2018)
    A retired professor gets to know some African refugees in Berlin. A scathing indictment of Western policy toward the European refugee crisis.
  • Des ailes au loin: Jadd Hilal (2018)
    A story of four generations of Palestinian-Lebanese women for whom migration becomes a way of life.
  • Qui a tué mon père: Edouard Louis (2018)
    “Especially in these times of gilets jaunes,[1] this is a very powerful and personal account of what we call la France d’en-bas.”
  • Les prénoms épicènes: Amélie Nothomb (2018)
    The relationship between a father and daughter.
  • The Overstory: Richard Powers (2018)
    Nine Americans come together to fight the destruction of forests. “A compelling book.”
  • Flights: Olga Tokarczuk (2018)
    Interweaves reflections on travel with an in-depth exploration of the human body. “At times uneven, but I liked her language.”
  • The Labyrinth of the Spirits: Carlos Ruiz Zafón (2016, translated from Spanish into English in 2018)
    The last in the Cemetry of Forgotten Books series. Alicia uncovers murders tied to the Franco regime.
  • Stay with Me: Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ (2017)
    A Nigerian couple’s unsuccessful attempts to have children tells on their marriage.
  • Lincoln in the Bardo: George Saunders (2017)
    “An unusual book—a sort of fragmented Spoon River Anthology.”
  • Behold the Dreamers: Imbolo Mbue (2016)
    A Cameroonian couple try to stay in New York—a story of migrants trying to make a life for themselves.
  • A Gentleman in Moscow: Amor Towles (2016)
    About a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel.
  • The Sellout: Paul Beatty (2015)
    Subversive look at race in the US.
  • Go Set a Watchman: Harper Lee (2015)
    The sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird.
  • Optic Nerve: Maria Gainza (2014, to be translated from Spanish into English in 2019)
    The story of a woman’s life told through artists and paintings.
  • Americanah: Chimananda Ngozi Adichie (2013)
    The experiences of a young Nigerian in the US and in Nigeria. Raises questions of race and belonging.
  • A Man called Ove: Fredrik Backman (2012, translated from Swedish into English in 2013)
    A curmudgeon finds his world turned around when a chatty family moves in next door. “It made me laugh out loud, and I love books that do that.”
  • The Sound of Things Falling: Juan Gabriel Vásquez (2011, translated from Spanish into English in 2013)
    How the drug trade in Colombia impacted on the lives of people.
  • Nazi Literature in the Americas: Roberto Bolaño (1996, translated from Spanish into English in 2008)
    A biographical dictionary of fictional right-wing Pan-American writers and Nazi sympathizers. Black humour.
  • Disobedience: Naomi Alderman (2006)
    A young photographer living in New York goes back to her orthodox Jewish community in London when her father dies and has to confront her past.
  • A Way through the Woods: Aminuddin Khan (1997)
    “Made me nostalgic for the people and stories of India I remembered hearing about when I first went to Hyderabad in the 1980s.”
  • Stoner: John Willams (1965)
    Follows William Stoner’s undistinguished academic career and his marriage and affair.

Classics

  • The Grapes of Wrath: John Steinbeck (1939)
    A family of tenant farmers migrates during the Great Depression.
  • War and Peace: Leo Tolstoy (1869, first translated from Russian into English in 1898)
    “I glazed over some of the war bits, and the epilogue is overwrought. But these are minor in the broad sweep of the novel (partly written by Tolstoy’s wife).”
  • The Tenant of Wildfell Hall: Anne Brontë (1848)
    “A classic I had never managed to get to and was surprised by how much I enjoyed it and admired both the writing and the characters.”
  • The Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus: Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen (1668, first translated from German into English in 1912. This entry refers to a 2018 translation.)
    “The account of the life of an odd vagrant named Melchior Sternfels von Fuchshaim.” (from the subtitle)

Crime

  • The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle: Stuart Turton (2018)
    “The most unusual whodunit I’ve read. Takes the idea of a murder in a country house and puts a completely different spin on it.”     
  • IQ (2016), Righteous (2017) and Wrecked (2018): Joe Ide
    Joe Ide is a Japanese-American crime fiction writer.
  • Inspector Armande Gamache series: Louise Penny
    Set in Quebec.

Humour

  • Last Week Tonight with John Oliver Presents a Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo: Jill Twiss, illustrated by Gerald Kelly (2018)
    A story about a gay bunny who belongs to US Vice President Mike Pence. “Something that rounds off the crazy year.”

Fantasy/Futuristic

  • The Sultanpur Chronicles: The Shadowed City: Achala Upendran (2018)
    Peace reigns in Sultanpur until a spell releases a rakshasi[2]and threatens to plunge the empire into chaos.
  • The Power: Naomi Alderman (2016)
    What happens when teenage girls have immense physical power to cause pain. 
  • Laurus: Evgeniy Vodolazkin (2013, translated from Russian into English in 2015)
    A healer sets out on a voyage of redemption that spans ages and countries.
  • Kafka on the Shore: Haruki Murakami (2002, translated from Japanese into English in 2005)
    “A weird and wonderful book about a young runaway and a man damaged by an accident trying to untangle their pasts.”
  • The Master and Margarita: Mikhail Bulgakov (1967, first translated from Russian into English in 1967)
    The devil pays a visit to Moscow. Subversive with lots of black humour.

Historical fiction

  • Homecoming: Yaa Gyasi (2017)
    The story of two half-sisters from a village in Ghana in the 18th century. One marries an Englishman and the other is sold into slavery.
  • Pachinko: Min Jin Lee (2017)
    Set in Japan in the early 1900s, it is about Sunja, a pregnant teenager and how her decisions impact on her life.  
  • L’Art de Perdre: Alice Zeniter (2017)
    “The consequences of being on the wrong side of history and not really belonging anywhere, this is about the Harkis[3] in France. Zeniter raises issues that French society does not really want to deal with and that individuals are still struggling with.
  • Burial Rites: Hannah Kent (2013)
    The final days of a young woman accused of murder in Iceland in 1829.
  • Les naufragés de l’île Tromelin: Irene Frain (2009)
    In 1761, a ship carrying slaves is wrecked on an unknown island in the Indian Ocean.  Fifteen years later, there are only eight survivors. What happened on the island?
  • The Book of Night Women: Marlon James (2009)
    “A haunting book about slavery in Jamaica in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.”
  • The Jewel of Medina: Sherry Jones (2008)
    A fictional biography of Aisha, the favourite wife of Prophet Muhammed.
  • Pompeii: Robert Harris (2003)
    A recreation of Pompeii in the days before Vesuvius erupted.
  • The Known World: Edward P. Jones (2003)
    About black slave owners in the US.
  • The World My Wilderness: Rose Macauley (1950)
    “A story of post-war Italy and London and the casual neglect of children by adults who were too busy with the aftermath of war to pay much attention to their children’s needs.”

Retellings

  • Circe: Madeline Miller (2018)
    A reworking of the story of Circe, the Greek goddess.
  • Frankenstein in Baghdad: Ahmed Saadawi (2013, translated from Arabic into English in 2018)
    Frankenstein in present-day Baghdad.
  • Norse Mythology: Neil Gaiman (2017)
    An enjoyable retelling of the Norse myths.
  • Hag-Seed: Margaret Atwood (2016)
    Margaret Atwood’s take on The Tempest.
  • Home Fires: Kamila Shamsie (2017)
    The story of a Pakistani immigrant family in Britain, and about being Muslim in the UK. Based on Sophocles’s Antigone.

NON-FICTION

Autobiography/Biography/Memoirs

  • Le Lambeau: Philippe Lançon (2018)
    “An account by one of the surviving journalists of the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack.”
  • Becoming: Michelle Obama (2018)
  • What Happened: Hillary Rodham Clinton (2017)
    “Political analysis of the shocker vote that saw Donald trump rise to the US presidency, as well as an honest introspection for Hillary – her life, career, mistakes, regrets and unfaltering sense of hope.”

History

  • The British in India: David Gilmour (2018)
    “Excellent and a marvellous compilation of the subject matter.”
  • Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China: Paul French (2011)
  • Kohinoor: The Story of the World’s Most Infamous Diamond: William Dalrymple (2017)

Science and living

  • Darwin Comes to Town: Menno Schilthuizen (2018)
    “Linking two of my favourite things: cities and biology.”
  • Building and Dwelling: Ethics for the City: Richard Sennett (2018)
  • I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life:  Ed Yong (2015)

Travel

Writing and reading

  • First You Write a Sentence: The Elements of Reading, Writing … and Life: Joe Moran (2018)
  • The Library Book: Susan Orlean (2018)
  • Essayism: On Form, Feeling, and Nonfiction: Brian Dillon (2017)

Philosophy

  • The Practicing Stoic: A Philosophical User’s Manual: David R. Godine (2018)
  • Hiking with Nietzsche: On Becoming Who You Are: John Kaag (2018)
    “He made Nietzsche a personal experience beyond the philosophy and linked to Nietzsche’s time in the Engadine.”

Current affairs

  • The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities: John J. Mearsheimer (2018)
  • Anita Gets Bail: What Are Our Courts Doing? What Should We Do About Them?: Arun Shourie (2018)
  • Fear: Trump in the White House: Bob Woodward (2018)
    “Absolutely terrifying—this man has the nuclear codes! I developed an unexpected respect for Tillerson, Mattis, Porter and Kelly as I read.”
  • Women and Power: Mary Beard (2017)
  • Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City: Matthew Desmond (2016)
  • Indian Muslim Spring: Why is No One Talking About It?: Hassan Suroor (2014)

Poetry and reflections

  • Kumukanda: Kayo Chingonyi (2017)
  • Benedictus: A Book of Blessings: John O’Donohue (2007)
    “A mixture of poems and reflections on blessing different events from Beginnings to Endings to Callings.”
  • The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos: Anne Carson (2001)

[1] Yellow jackets, the symbol of the popular protest in France in 2018.

[2] A female demon.

[3] The generic term for native Muslim Algerians who served as auxiliaries in the French Army during the Algerian War of Independence from 1954 to 1962.

[4] Scroll down the page on Asia to find the review.

Women travellers tell their stories

23 Monday Jul 2018

Posted by in Non-Fiction, Travel

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Think of all the travel books that you have read: how many of them are written by men? Almost all? And yet women have been travelling and writing about it for as long as men. As a reviewer for the website, Women on the Road, I have spent the last few years reading these books. And it has been a delight to discover their rich variety. Some women take off on solo adventures, while others travel with friends or partners; some explore far-flung places and others focus on where they live.

I would like introduce you to some of my favourites. They cover the five continents and are in a variety of styles. What the books have in common is that they go off the beaten track and try to capture the soul of a place.

Almost all the links lead to my reviews on Women on the Road. It’s been hard to pick just a few (I whittled them down to a baker’s dozen) but I hope this list will tempt you to not only read the ones I have recommended but to actively look for travel books by women.

Note: The reviews on Women on the Road are split according to regions. I have highlighted one book per page and listed a few more that can be found on the same page, indicating where they are relative to the highlighted book.

A Short Ride through the Jungle: The Ho Chi Minh Trail by Motorcycle by Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent
This is one of my favourite kinds of books (you will find a few more like this on this list): an intrepid woman travelling on her own. In this case, Antonia Bolingbroke bikes the Ho Chi Minh trail, combining her experiences with its history. She follows the trail through Viet Nam, Cambodia and Laos, navigating through jungles and unexploded bombs.

Also on this page (scroll down for the first two; A Revolutionary Ride is at the top of the page)
Indonesia etc.: Exploring the Improbable Nation by Elizabeth Pisani
Pisani crosses the breadth of this country of 13,466 islands. She speaks the language and is therefore able to communicate with the people, even in remote areas.

Four Corners: A Journey into the Heart of Papua New Guinea by Kira Salak
This book is an attempt to understand Papua New Guinea, a country that is not a typical travel destination. Salak visits its interior, walking through almost impenetrable jungles and not letting trivial things like fever get in the way.

A Revolutionary Ride: On the Road in Search of the Real Iran by Lois Pryce
Pryce rides her motorcycle from Iran’s border with Turkey to Shiraz during a time of tense relations between the UK and Iran. As a woman travelling alone in Iran, she worries about her reception but finds the people welcoming and supportive (except for the Revolutionary Guard, who are less impressed with her feat).

Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria by Noo Saro-Wiwa
Noo Saro-Wiwa is Ken Saro-Wiwa’s daughter. After her father’s assassination, Saro-Wiwa swears that she will never go back to Nigeria, a promise she keeps for several years. Then she decides to give the country another chance and spends five months there, taking in the ancient Nok sculptures (1000 BC­–500 AD), meeting Nollywood directors and talking to ordinary Nigerians. A portrait of a country from someone who is an insider and an outsider at the same time (something many expats will identify with).

Also on this page (scroll up):
All Strangers are Kin: Adventures in Arabic and the Arab World by Zora O’Neill
O’Neill journeys to Egypt, the Gulf states, Lebanon and Morocco to practice her Arabic and understand their culture and customs. This is not just a travelogue but a linguistic journey and a glimpse into an ancient region that is now in flux.

The Politics of Washing: Real Life in Venice by Polly Coles
Coles moves to Venice with her husband and three children and writes about what it means to live in a major tourist destination. How do Venetians cope with the vast numbers of people trooping through their city? Funny and insightful.

Also on this page (scroll down):
Forward: Letters Written on a Trip around the World by Lina Boegli
Published in 1905, this is a collection of letters written by a Swiss woman, Lina Boegli, to her friend during her 10-year sojourn through Australia, New Zealand, Samoa, Hawaii (an independent country at the time) and the United States. To support herself, Boegli works as she travels. It is inspiring to know that women had been doing this over a century ago.

Tracks by Robyn Davidson
Davidson—yet another intrepid woman—crosses Australia with her dog and three camels (actually four camels: one of them is pregnant). Everything you want to know about camels but were afraid to ask. I love her descriptions of the desert and her encounters with the Aborigines.

Also on this page (scroll down):
Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica by Sara Wheeler
Wheeler goes to Antarctica partly out of curiosity and partly to explore a “landscape of the mind”: a place that is desolate that you are forced to face yourself. Fascinating portrait of a region with no native people and scarcely any wildlife.

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed
Strayed loses her mother and as a way of coping with her grief and facing down her demons, she decides to hike the Pacific Crest Trail, albeit with more determination than experience. She loses toenails and a hiking boot but makes it through—both physically and emotionally—with her trusty rucksack, Monster.

Sliced Iguana: Travels in Mexico by Isabella Tree
In this book, Tree brings together the country’s past and present, looking for the “hidden Mexico”. She visits floating gardens in Mexico City, participates in a peyote ceremony in Chiapas and finds a feisty matriarchal society in Juchitan.

Also on this page (scroll up):
Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas by Rebecca Solnit and Rebecca Snedeker
And now for something completely different: this is not a travelogue in the strict sense, but a new way of looking at a city. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of New Orleans, ranging from carnival routes to where slave pens used to be, and the best places to eat oysters. Each chapter is accompanied by an attractive map. Beautifully produced, this book builds a multifaceted picture of the city.

Photo from Pxhere.com

Winter Journal: Paul Auster

21 Saturday Apr 2018

Posted by in Autobiography / Biography / Memoir, Non-Fiction

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Memories are not linear; they have a chronology all their own. In Winter Journal, Paul Auster looks back at his life, meandering back and forth in time. He is the 63-year-old man climbing out of bed to look at the snow turning the trees white, the boy, all of 3 and a half years old, going wild in the endless space of a department store and splitting his cheek on a nail on the leg of a carpenter’s bench, and a 12-year-old focused on his game of baseball. Each incident is captured with the clarity of film and a clear memory of what it felt to be that person at that time.

This is a journey through Auster’s life: the places he lived, the women he loved, and the scars he picked up along the way. He writes about the body, the way it grows, develops and starts to wear out. He writes entirely in second person, which can be hard to get right, but it works here.

Marriages in his family seem to be rocky, except for his own. His parents’ marriage was doomed to failure: “an impetuous marriage between two incompatible souls that ran out of steam before the honeymoon was over”. Like that of his grandparents: “Your father would be such a wonderful man—if only he were different”, says his grandmother to her daughter. His father’s parents weren’t much happier: his grandmother shot her husband in their kitchen. Auster’s mother was a free spirit who went her own way, although she was a good mother to him: “you were the beneficiary of her unhappiness, and you were well loved”.

There is a lot about this book I liked: the writing and the stories he tells. However, I found parts of it a little self-indulgent: we don’t really need the details of all the places he’s lived in. It’s a device he uses to trace the path of his life but it could have been shortened considerably without losing anything. And do we really need almost the entire plot of DOA, the 1949 film by Rudolph Maté? If there was a reason for its inclusion, then I completely missed it.

But Auster at his best is a pleasure to read. Here is a vivid description of him as a 6-year-old, stepping on a nest of wasps: “seconds later you were engulfed by those stinging creatures, who were attacking your face and arms, and even as you tried to swat them away, others had crawled inside your clothes and were stabbing you in your legs and chest and back. Horrific pain. You went running out of the bushes into the grass in the backyard, no doubt screaming your head off, and there was your mother, who took one glance at you and immediately began stripping off your clothes, and when there was no longer a stitch on you, she swooped up your naked body in her arms…carried you upstairs, turned on the water, and put you in a cold, cold bath.”

You can feel the relief of the “cold, cold bath” at the end of that paragraph. It is writing like this that makes this book worth reading.

 

Life’s sentences

25 Sunday Mar 2018

Posted by in Non-Fiction, Poetry

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I have several books of poetry on my shelf…and now, on my Kindle. I leaf (or swipe) through them in the spaces between fiction, when I am recovering from an intense or troubling story or when the weather puts me in the mood for contemplation rather than escape. There are some I return to periodically, like making a phone call to an old friend, in an attempt to find those pools of quiet in my noisy life. Mary Oliver, A K Ramanujan, Elizabeth Bishop, and good old Eliot. A recent happy discovery has been Clive James, whom I first encountered on a New Yorker podcast reading his very popular “Japanese Maple”–which you can listen to here.

coverSince then, I have dipped into James’ poems often, and my most recent favorite is the collection Sentenced to Life (Picador, 2015), work written between 2011 and 2014, a period when he seems to be settling into a comfortable relationship with death. James is a memoirist, critic, television commentator and poet, and in each of these roles the gentle power of his words–and an underlying humor and empathy–is unmistakabl

Many of the 37 poems in this volume reflect a sense of sadness yet an eye for the beauty of small things, such as that Japanese maple in his backyard. So in “Driftwood Houses”, while he acknowledges that “Disintegration is appropriate” he remembers the driftwood houses that he built “…for our girls to roof/With towels so they could hide there in the shade/With ice creams that would melt more slowly.” Or, in the title poem: “My daughter’s garden has a goldfish pool/With six fish, each a little finger long./I stand and watch them following their rule/Of never touching, never going wrong:/Trajectories as perfect as plain song.”

Reading through the poems is like spending a lazy Sunday looking at life in slow motion, stopping at moments that suddenly seem meaningful, telling you something about yourself, your vanities, your loves, and your frailties. Clive James recalls scenes from old movies (he is after all a film buff); in one we might suddenly encounter  Catherine Zeta-Jones and in another, Ava Gardner. At other times he unearths cultural trivia (remarking that Tolstoy makes “a midget of your [Napoleon’s] memory”), but refusing to take any of it too seriously.

“While you were reading this/Millions of stars moved closer/Towards their own extinction/So many years ago–/But let’s believe our eyes:/They say it’s all here now.”

Not all of it resonates, of course, and not all of it is lyrical, but there is enough in the slim volume to make dipping into it worthwhile, on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

 

A Parrot in the Pepper Tree: Chris Stewart

12 Monday Mar 2018

Posted by in Autobiography / Biography / Memoir, Non-Fiction

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Many of us dream of giving up the rat-race and living the simple life in a community far removed from the hustle of cities. These remain dreams for most of us, but not for Chris Stewart and his wife Ana. In 1988, they moved to Alpujarras in Andalucia, Spain, and bought a farm called El Valero without running water, electricity, telephone or an access road. And they are there still.

Stewart’s claim to fame before he became a well-known writer was that he was the drummer in Genesis when they first started out. He has since sailed a boat (and written about it), worked on a building site, was the drummer at a circus and sheared sheep before settling down in El Valero. The sheep shearing came in handy when he was at El Valero—Swedish farmers would pay for his services, money that kept the farm going. I doubt that he needs to do that any more—his books about living in Spain have, much to his surprise, been huge successes.

This is Stewart’s second book about life in El Valero with Ana and their daughter, Chloe, who was born there.[1] Like the others, it is laugh-out-loud funny. There are several wonderful moments: Stewart addressing a group of Swedish farmers about farming in England (about which he knows nothing) and leaving them with the impression of a country that produces two-ton cows and improbable crop yields. Walking home one day, he finds his neighbour Bernardo contemplating a fig tree. “I have a little problem.” The corpse of Bernardo’s dead Pekinese, Moffli, was stuck in the tree because of his attempt to hide the dog’s death from the kids (“I swung him round and round…and then I let him go…but I think I got the timing wrong”).

The Stewarts have a motley collection of animals, including the bad-tempered and misanthropic parrot of the title, Lorca, renamed Porca. Porca falls head over heels in love with Ana and won’t let her out of his sight. He hates everyone else (especially Stewart) because they are competition for the attentions of his beloved. Porca builds nests using whatever he can get his claws on—toothbrushes, bits of twig, cutlery. Once the nest is done, he tries to entice Ana in by emitting lovesick meeps.

All this sounds idyllic but Stewart doesn’t gloss over the difficulties of living the simple life. The family try to keep their vegetable patch safe from marauding sheep and badgers, he has to stop writing to deal with a bumper crop of potatoes, and making a phone call involves walking for hour, some of it through a fast-flowing river. The telephone belongs to a family who charge exorbitant rates. “Once inside the gloomy sitting room, she [the lady of the house] would click the meter back to nought and then stand beside it, arms folded, glaring at me. On a really bad day, other members of the family would gather and glare, too.” And all this while he is trying not to (and clearly failing) to drip river water onto the floor.

There is also the very serious threat hanging over their valley: if the planned dam in the area goes ahead, their valley would be flooded, and Stewart and his farmer neighbours would have to leave.

I love these books. The family have become part of the community and obviously love it there. Stewart’s affection for their neighbours and his love of the region comes through in the book. He writes lyrically about walking in the borreguiles, the high mountain meadows of the Sierra Nevada and seeing the Sierra Nevada gentians. “Common to them all is the perfect peace, the almost supernatural clarity of the water and the springiness of the deep green grass. … In early July…I walked up to the meadows… . As I clambered over the lip, I was struck dumb by what I saw. The grass was no longer green, it was a sheet of livid blue—a blue so dazzling that it seemed to come from outside the normal spectrum of perception.”

I, for one, am keeping my fingers crossed that the dam will not go ahead, and Chris Stewart will continue to be able to live in the place he loves and which he has made his home.

[1] I reviewed the first one, Driving over Lemons, for Women on the Road : it was my first review for the website. You can read it at the bottom of the page on Europe.